5 US soldiers killed in helicopter crash in Afghanistan

A helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan has killed five American service members, officials said on Tuesday.

Monday night's crash brought the total number of US troops killed that day to seven, making it the deadliest day for US forces so far this year. Two US special operations forces were gunned down hours earlier in an insider attack by an Afghan policeman in eastern Afghanistan.

The NATO military coalition said in a statement that initial reports showed no enemy activity in the area at the time. The cause of the crash is under investigation, the statement said.

A US official said all five of the dead were American. The official said the helicopter went down outside Kandahar city. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been formally released.

All five people aboard the UH-60 Black Hawk were killed, said Maj. Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the international military coalition.

At the same time as the crash was being reported, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was berating the Taliban for giving the US a reason to stay longer in the country, by staging the deadly weekend attacks that killed at least 19 Afghans, including eight children.

This was a softening from Karzai's comments Sunday, when he accused the US and the Taliban of cooperating to stage Saturday's deadly suicide attacks to scare Afghans into allowing foreign troops to stay in the country.

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. Joseph Dunford rejected his charges of U.S. collusion with the Taliban as "categorically false," and U.S. ambassador James Cunningham said Monday, "It is inconceivable that we would spend the lives of America's sons, daughters...in helping Afghans to secure and rebuild your country, and at the same time be engaged in endangering Afghanistan or its citizens."

The troops killed in Monday's helicopter crash make 12 U.S. troops killed so far this year in Afghanistan. There were 297 U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan in 2012, according to an Associated Press tally.

It was the deadliest crash since August, when a US military helicopter went down during a firefight with insurgents in a remote area of Kandahar. Seven Americans and four Afghans died in that crash.